When it comes to literary mash-ups (classic works of literature or accounts featuring historical figures rewritten to include fantastical elements like zombies or vampires), William Blake’s classic quote—“the road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom... for we never know what is enough until we know what is more than enough."—is more than fitting. Or is it?
It seems like a decade since Seth Grahame-Smith released Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which took Jane Austen’s iconic 1813 love story featuring Elizabeth Bennet and the arrogant Mr. Darcy and added to it a scourge of zombies, but it’s barely been more than a year! There is no question how historically significant this release was—with more than a million copies in print, it was nothing short of a publishing phenomenon. And like anything else that is extraordinarily successful, shortly after its release in April of 2009 came a virtual deluge of comparable mash-ups.
Here is just a small sampling: Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters; Jane Bites Back by Michael Thomas Ford; Little Women and Werewolves by Louisa May Alcott and Porter Grand; Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith; Mr. Darcy, Vampyre by Amanda Grange; Android Karenina by Leo Tolstoy and Ben H. Winters; and the prequel to the book that started it all, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls by Steven Hockensmith.
And there are no signs that the literary mash-up inundation is slowing down. Just recently released from Tor Books is The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the Undead by Mark Twain and Don Borchert. And coming out in September from Night Shade Books is The Zombies of Lake Woebegotton by Harrison Geillor.
Truth be told, I just finished The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the Undead and it had some memorable scenes. Aunt Polly, afraid of the looming Zum (zombie) threat, tells Tom to go out and sharpen all of the planks on the fence surrounding the house. But instead of spending the entire day working, Tom figures out a way to not only get his buddies to do the work but also get paid for it as well!
Am I shocked by all of these releases? Not in the least. Before becoming a book reviewer, I managed bookstores for years and it’s simply the nature of the publishing beast. If a novel sells phenomenally well, you can bet money that within six months to a year, you’ll be seeing comparable releases on the shelves. After Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code was released in 2003, I saw derivativ—ahem, inspired—releases for years afterwards! And what about Grisham’s The Firm or Rowling’s Harry Potter or Meyer’s Twilight saga? Yes, imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery but it’s also apparently a savvy publishing philosophy too!
Last year, I asked whether literary mash-ups were just a fad or a legitimate new category in genre fiction that will continue to grow and evolve in the years to come. The majority of readers—myself included—seemed to think that this was a trend that would eventually lose steam and fade back into the publishing woodwork. But new literary mash-ups keep coming out so that tells me there is definitely an audience—and if you think about it, the potential here really is almost limitless. How many classic novels are ripe for an injection of zombies or vampires or werewolves?
What if Humbert in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita was a vampire? What if the humans in Orwell’s Animal Farm were zombies? What if A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh were a vicious werepooh? Can you imagine Eeyore about to become Pooh’s next victim? “Run Piglet and Tigger and Kanga and Roo! Go get Christopher Robbin and tell him to bring his silver spoon quick!”
It’s been almost a year and a half since the release of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I’ll ask again—what do you think? Will we be seeing literary mash-ups a decade from now or is this the fad coming to an end?
Paul Goat Allen has been a full-time book reviewer specializing in genre fiction for almost the last two decades and has written more than 6,000 reviews for companies like Publishers Weekly, The Chicago Tribune, and BarnesandNoble.com. In his free time, he reads.
paulgoatallen wrote:
It’s been almost a year and a half since the release of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I’ll ask again—what do you think? Will we be seeing literary mash-ups a decade from now or is this the fad coming to an end?
Paul Goat Allen has been a full-time book reviewer specializing in genre fiction for almost the last two decades and has written more than 6,000 reviews for companies like Publishers Weekly, The Chicago Tribune, and BarnesandNoble.com. In his free time, he reads.
Interesting question, Paul. I've seen the Pride and Prejudice books and the Sense and Sensibliity one, in bookstores and the library. Haven't been tempted to actually read one yet. I do note that most of the books that have been "mashed" so far have been what might be called historical romances. Ditto with the Little Women and Werewolves one. These books have been infused with an "other-worldly" cast that still operates in the romance realm. (What's more romantic than getting rescued from a Vampire or Werewolf>) It will be interesting to see if the mashing begins to extend to other genre forms as well. Will we see Science Fiction books adding Vampires , Werewolves, and Zombies to the cast of characters? Will Agatha Christie's detectives be forced to deal with these supernatural creatures as well as the usual human suspects in a murder case? It's all a bit like the tar baby--or is that topsy I'm thinking of, that kept growing from its original form? My thoughts at this time are that this is a fad that will burn brightly for a while, but eventually run its course and the authors of these derivative books will either adapt to more classic genre forms or disappear.
